A house for Mr. Biswas
by V. S. Naipaul
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Born the "wrong way" and thrust into a world that greeted him with little more than a bad omen, Mr. Mohun Biswas has spent his forty-six years of life striving for independence. But his determined efforts have met only with calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. When he marries into the domineering Tulsi family on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, he takes on myriad vocations in an arduous struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. A heartrending, dark comedy of manners, A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man's quest for autonomy against the backdrop of postcolonial Trinidad.
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Subjects
Home ownership, Journalists, Family, East Indians, Middle aged men, Homeowners, Fiction, Trinidad and Tobago, Port of Spain, Middle-aged men, Außenseiter, Inder, British and irish fiction (fictional works by one author), Caribbean area, fiction, Fiction, family life, Fiction, humorous, Fiction, humorous, general, FamiliesTimes
20th centuryShowing 8 featured editions. View all 22 editions?
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1
A house for Mr. Biswas
2001, Vintage International
in English
- 1st Vintage International ed.
0375707166 9780375707162
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A house for Mr. Biswas
1984, A. Deutsch
in English
- 3rd ed. with foreward.
0233955895 9780233955896
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A house for Mr. Biswas
1984, Vintage Books, Vintage
in English
- 1st Vintage Books ed.
0394720504 9780394720500
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A house for Mr. Biswas
1983, Knopf, Distributed by Random House
in English
- 1st Alfred A. Knopf ed.
039453400X 9780394534008
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Work Description
Naipaul’s breakthrough novel is a marvellous comic tale of a Trinidadian of Indian descent striving to improve his lot. Continually making big plans for himself he constantly finds himself thwarted by his wife’s family and by his own ineptitude and over-reaching ambition.
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- Created April 1, 2008
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| May 18, 2025 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
| December 13, 2023 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
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| October 4, 2021 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
| April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |